


The roads don't lead away

by eak_a_mouse



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-14
Updated: 2012-09-14
Packaged: 2017-11-14 04:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eak_a_mouse/pseuds/eak_a_mouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And that’s how it went, roads straightening and curving where they needed to go and leading back to Dean. Always Dean. Dean with a knife on his hip and a gun holstered at the small of his back and a pool cue in his hand and a beer at his lips in sunlight and rain and the flickering lights of bars, wood shined by the oil of a thousand hands smooth beneath his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The roads don't lead away

The first time that Sam drove, he was too small to reach the pedals. Clutching the steering wheel and straining to see over the dash, that first trip was a nightmare memory of Dean’s fading voice giving directions while the air filled with the coppery smell of his blood. Sam didn’t dare look in the rearview mirror and didn’t dare look away. Green eyes only met his gaze in irregular intervals, bright with pain and a little smirk there for him, handling Dean’s baby for the first time. They were always, always running on the back roads, the woods, the wilds, the fringes of civilization and getting his bloody brother from there to a hospital, well. Sam’s claimed it was dumb luck (and Dean’s got enough of make the impossible probable) and a good sense of direction and Dean’s instructions breathed through gritted teeth, but the road never ran more straight, right to where they needed to go. 

___

The first time Sam ran away, he never made it away from the motel. He’d never done the childhood attempt with some stuffed animal and a suitcase; Dean had been too sharp for that. But a summer of five mile runs before dawn and sparring in the dirt of the backyard, had him itching to get away. Dean brought back one more girl smelling overly sweet and floral like perfume was a brand new discovery and Dean looked like he wanted to lick every inch of her skin if she’d let him. He was placing sloppy kisses and little nips all up and down her neck as she squirmed in the best way to get them both excited. 

Even when Dean realized that Sam was in the room and reached to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand uneasily, he still couldn’t keep his hand from sliding up her neck. Sam was out the door before Dean could say a word, backpack slung over his shoulder. He had a couple changes of clothes, his favorite knife on the side, and he could win what money he needed. Get far enough away, maybe make enough to get to a school with boarding. He would muddle through. 

The motel was separated from the highway by whatever was passing as woods these days, enough trees and underbrush to hide the motel from view, and not much more. He’d figured, a quick hike through the woods, and he would be able to hitchhike himself away from here. Dean could be a soldier by himself. 

Sam knew woodscraft. Maybe he’d never be a boyscout, but their dad had dropped them in the woods to find their way back often enough that he could find his way. Only, fifteen minutes of steady walking, a rise and fall of a hill, and he found himself back on the edge of the motel’s parking lot. He’d walked straight and ended up making a circle. Fine, whatever, woods weren’t his thing. He went to follow the road the highway and Dean was leaning against the impala with a beer, no girl in sight, and that apologetic dip in his shoulders. 

So, he wouldn’t run today. 

___  
The next time there was a haunted cemetery to clear out, Sam got stuck reading his textbooks by flashlight in the car, again, shotgun at ready if either Dean or Dad called for backup. The night was the kind of quiet that horror movies capitalized on. A bit of fog, some crooked grave markers, and the atmosphere did more to prey on ancient fears than any theatricality. Dad and Dean had already gone their way silently, disappearing like ghosts, and Sam was hunkered down for the night, wishing for his own room, maybe with a bed and a desk and a bookshelf. He could imagine studying by a warm pool of light, instead of the narrow beam of the flashlight. 

Still, when he heard a scream, he had gun in hand, running for the noise, with no thought to his notes dropped in a messy pile, because that was Dean. 

Dad and Dean had planned to split up to find the damn bones. And Sam only knew vaguely where he was supposed to be (and really, there was a 50-50 chance that that information would be useless in finding him), but heart racing, faster than his sprint required, he found himself unerringly pointed toward his brother. All he could think was There.

John Winchester found his younger son helping his brother limp to the impala after taking care of the bones. Sam’s face was mulish under the bangs covering his eyes and John knew better than to ask what the hell happened before Dean was seen to.

He managed to get the story out of a medicated Dean, once his broken arm was set in a cast. Spirited half a mile away and stowed in a mausoleum by the damned ghost, Sam had found him. Dean murmured something about research, but John remembered his own panic at the graveyard, and couldn’t help but look to the waiting room, where Sam was sitting, hands between his knees. 

The fucking mausoleum hadn’t been anywhere in the records.

___

 

And that’s how it went, roads straightening and curving where they needed to go and leading back to Dean. Always Dean. Dean with a knife on his hip and a gun holstered at the small of his back and a pool cue in his hand and a beer at his lips in sunlight and rain and the flickering lights of bars, wood shined by the oil of a thousand hands smooth beneath his own. 

He knew better, Sam did. He read his high school book on psychology and knew what codependent meant, why the mental health professionals would have condemned the way he and Dean grew up without air between them. But, then, they never faced the things that went bump in the night, never knew how much comfort it was to have trusted warmth at your back. 

But, this wasn’t Sam’s fight and he was never meant for soldiering and orders and cheap lodging treated like barracks. He dreamt of barbecues and houses and family. Normal.   
___

 

As the fights between he and his father became the norm rather than the exception, Sam starting sending applications out in earnest, P.O. boxes hidden in aliases and transcripts squirreled away in his bag. 

When Stanford came back with not only an acceptance, but a scholarship he could live on, Sam stared sightlessly down at the page with the insignia at the top and wondered if he could truly do this. Leave everything he knew behind for a chance at everything he wanted. He had a foot out the door, but if you were halfway gone, you were halfway to staying, and Sam’d been walking that line all his life. 

God, but that last fight had his hands shaking in rage. Bag packed, and wheels up in ten minutes or less, before he’d had a chance to think twice or get caught by Dean and the look in his eyes like Sam was breaking his heart. 

When the Impala had idled up next to his angry footsteps, the open passenger door was the invitation Dean wouldn’t voice, not when he couldn’t even look at Sam. Sam slid into the passenger seat like he’d been sitting there all his life, like the leather’d been stitched with him in mind. 

Leaving when they pulled up to the bus station, felt like pulling teeth, or cutting off an arm, and Dean had the stoic face of a man volunteering for amputation. 

That was the last thing he saw, Dean on the hood of the Impala, that leather jacket that swallowed his misery, head down and the amulet glinting in the gray autumn light. It seemed like the Impala had brought its own gray cloud to the autumn morning, spoiling the crisp air and bright sunlight, and Sam thought it should be rainy and wet and miserable, not this silent goodbye with bright orange trees in the background. 

___

 

It wasn’t until he was halfway to being rocked to sleep by the motion of the bus, squished up against the cool glass, that he caught himself rummaging through his bag. A knife, a small canister of salt, and a roll of crumpled bills had been tucked into his things. A corner of his mouth turned up at evidence of Dean’s light fingered tendencies, before staring down at the small compass that had rolled into his palm in consternation. 

Holding it up, the arrow pointed, not north, but in the direction that Sam knew led back to where he started. 

And he wondered absently, if he’d have been able to leave, if Dean hadn’t let him go.

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted to my livejournal. Unbeta'ed.


End file.
